


samvibhajana

by AllegoriesInMediasRes



Series: Ramayana fics [29]
Category: Ramayana - Valmiki
Genre: Adoption, Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Grief, Mother-Daughter Relationships, Oneshot, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:00:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25438837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllegoriesInMediasRes/pseuds/AllegoriesInMediasRes
Summary: Queen Sunaina of Mithila shared her daughter, Sita, with the earth herself. Sunaina, too, had a sister -- Sulochana -- whom her mother shared with another.samvibhajana (Sanskrit): act of sharing with another
Relationships: Sunaina & Bhumi Devi, Sunaina & Sita
Series: Ramayana fics [29]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1105638
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	samvibhajana

Sunaina has never tended to dwell on matters.

She was born when Parvati Devi knotted Lord Shiva’s snake too tightly around his wrist. Two tears fell to the earth, and from those tears, Sunaina and her sister Sulochana were born.

Parvati and the snake both laid a claim upon the girls: the snake because they were born of his tears, Parvati because she was the one who had elicited the tears. Lord Shiva judged them both equally responsible and decreed that each would have one daughter.

She is almost ashamed to admit it, but she has never dwelled much on the twin she was parted from at birth, or wondered how her mother felt to lose one daughter to the Nagas. Sunaina was reared at Kailash, fostered by the river goddess Narmada, and given in marriage to Janaka of Mithila. Duty and wisdom have been the vehicles of her life, and they left little room for _what ifs_. It is only now that her hair is gray and her joints aching, her own daughters all aged and bent as well, that Sunaina has nothing to do but dwell. 

In these twilight years, she can finally wonder how the Destroyer’s wife felt to have one child cleaved from her in the name of fairness, to see her shaped and nurtured by other forces. Sulochana grew up in Naga-Loka among the snakes and married the conqueror of the gods, the son of Sunaina’s daughter’s captor. Sulochana’s father widowed her, and she threw herself upon her husband’s pyre out of more than one kind of grief. 

Sunaina does not ask even now, because she thinks she knows the answer, and she does not need to see it reflected in the eyes of the daughter of the mountain. She knows all too well what spires within her when she thinks of her own eldest daughter, and the mother whom she shares -- _shared_ \-- Sita with. 

Some days it is bitter jealousy, the lines of _mine_ and _yours_ demarcated in stone, and the thoughts within her grasping and covetous: _You gave her to me, only to take her away. She turned to you, not me, in her darkest hour_.

Other days, it morphs into something like bitter gratitude, softened by the philosophical approach to life she cultivated in herself as _patrani_ of Mithila: _You were the first to keep her safe, before she was born. You proved her chastity and granted her peace_.

And then sometimes, there is only bitter kinship, neither positive nor negative, but simply an acknowledgement of what is true: _We both loved her_. 

It is in these moments, when one aching heart knows another, that in the dead of night, Sunaina steals out to the gardens. There, she collapses to her knees and weeps, her fingers curling into the silty earth. 


End file.
